


Nodus Tollens

by Liana_Legaspi



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Set after S1, Yuri's a fifteen year old kid with a lot on his hands, Yuuri's in St. Petersburg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 15:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9330527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liana_Legaspi/pseuds/Liana_Legaspi
Summary: Yuri’s still just a teenager when he has his first mid-life crisis. “What would you do if you woke up one day and decided that all the awards weren’t enough, and suddenly, you got tired of skating?”Or, in which Yuri doesn't hate Yuuri Katsuki nearly as much as he pretends to.





	

“Sometimes, you skate like you’re up against the world.”

“What can I say? You skate the way you feel.”

 

 

 

It’s seven thirty on a Monday when Yuri trades out his T-shirt and sweats for the dull grey of his uniform and his skates for penny loafers that have next to no traction. All in all, it feels more like a costume than any of his program outfits ever did.

The blazer smells like the basement it’s been stored in and his slacks hang a good two inches above his school issued shoes. Yakov tells him that he’s sent in his updated measurements and that a new one’s coming soon, but it doesn’t change the fact that Yuri’s ankles are showing and he looks like a dweeb.

Everyone else—Georgi, Viktor, Yuuri—are all still practicing. Of course, he thinks, bitter as Yakov’s morning coffee, because it’s been fucking ages since any of them have had to worry about something like school. Mila comes over and coos over his uniform, ruffling his hair like she isn’t only eighteen and still working on getting her own high school diploma.

He swats her hand away and mutters, “Fuck off.”

The textbooks in his messenger bag are heavy, an annoying presence against his hip that grates on his nerves. And he kind of wants to chuck the entire thing off the Tuchkov Bridge. He won’t though; said textbooks are also expensive as hell, and Yuri’s not suicidal. From across the rink, Viktor yells, "Good luck, Yurio!"

Yuri gives him the middle finger, and Yakov doesn't even scold him for that one.

Mila stops her teasing long enough for her eyes to soften, and the understanding smile she gives him just makes him want to vomit. She tugs him into a one-armed hug and tells him, “Hang in there. A few more years and you'll be home free.”

Sit in a classroom for thirteen years and get by even if you only understand seventy percent of each class. Sit in a classroom for a few more years, and you can put down one extra line on your resume. Sit in a classroom for longer, and you might know enough to be able to save a life.

Yuri sits in a classroom for ten years and misses out on hours that could be spent practicing.

He doesn’t hug Mila back, but she wasn't expecting him to. In two hours, she’ll be wearing her own school uniform—boxy and a dark shade of maroon that clashes with her hair, so she lets him go and runs through her own routine while she can, picking up speed for a triple flip.

Arms raised.

Textbook form.

Fucking ISU would cry if they saw it.

At eighteen, Mila's body doesn’t look like it'll change very much. At eighteen, she’s still flexible enough to do spins that would break Yuri’s back. In top condition and vying for gold, Mila Babicheva doesn’t know if she wants to go to college or live out what's left of her career.

Stability versus glory, Yuri supposes. Even Wonder Bread has a longer shelf-life than a competitive figure skater's. 

Yuri sighs. “The fuck are you looking at, Katsudon?”

Yuuri doesn’t start or look even vaguely embarrassed that he was caught staring. Either his uniform makes Yuri look like that much of a loser or Katsudon was growing a spine. Yuuri smiles at him, not teasing like Mila or indulgent like Viktor. Just friendly.

“Nothing.” Yuuri says, “You look nice.”

Yuri squints at him, unsure if he’s making fun of him or not. It’s _Yuuri_ so he’s most likely not, but still—shitty fashion sense or not—Yuri can’t tell what part of his Sears-value uniform can even be considered ‘ _nice_ ’.

He’s still debating how to respond to that when Yakov tells him that his Uber’s arrived, and if he doesn’t get moving, he’ll be late. Not that Yuri’s opposed to that. Go to school, forget your pen, trip into a bank of piss-covered snow, and sleep through all of first period because your brain doesn’t fully function until ten in the morning. No, Yuri’s not opposed to being late at all, but the other Yuuri beams at him and wishes him good luck in heavily accented Russian, and it’s all he can do to nod mutely.

It’d be one thing if his teachers didn’t treat him like he was such a special case. It’d be one thing if instead of telling him, “I understand that you have a busy schedule, so just do as much as you can for this assignment, all right?” they said, “Okay, I respect that you’re a busy person, but when you sit in my class, you’re a student just like everyone else.”

It’d be one thing if the hours he spent with his ass planted in a chair, desk too low for him to even cross his legs without bumping into it, were at least spent _well_ , but instead, he’s stuck listening to teachers who don’t expect anything from him.

It also wouldn't suck so much if Yuri didn’t have to share a class with eight of his fans. The camera shutter sounds make pinpricks along his back and his arms. Yuri clenches his teeth, presses his ballpoint pen into his notebook so hard it stains the next page, and thinks, _At least put it on silent_.

Go to a zoo and think that nature is beautiful. Sit in the same room with your idol and don’t say a goddamn word to them. Yuri has nothing against algebra. Honestly, it’s one of the lesser evils—find the pattern, memorize the formula, and pull at least a _B_. Yuri raises his hand twenty minutes into his math class—thirty-five minutes into pretending he doesn’t even notice that the other kids are taking pictures of him and posting them on social media—and tells his teacher that he needs to use the restroom.

She gives him a smile, sweet as sugar and sickeningly indulging and says, “Go ahead."

She doesn’t bother giving him a hall pass. Yuri takes his bag along with him, and no one even questions it.

Yuri’s career? The best by only 0.12 points.

Yuri’s education? A fucking joke.

Yuri Plisetsky? Young enough to still be considered a kid. Old enough to represent his country in the men’s division. Apparently, not above hightailing it over to the toilets to make a phone call.

Yuri locks himself in a bathroom stall and means to call up an Uber to take him back to the Yubileyny Sports Palace or Lilia’s or the ballet studio or literally anywhere that isn’t _here_ , but for some reason he winds up scrolling through his contacts instead and clicks on the first person who catches his eye.

**_Katsudon_**

_Calling mobile…_  

He picks up on the second ring, and Yuri's spiteful enough to think, _Aren’t you supposed to be practicing?_

 _“Yurio!”_ The sound of hard breathing and skates slicing through the ice. Yuri lets his eyes drift shut at the sound. _“Aren’t you at school right now?”_

Fair enough. “Yeah, I’m—” Yuri cuts himself off, suddenly unsure of what he was trying to accomplish by calling _Katsudon_ of all people. “I’m…here,” he says, off-balanced like he's six and just learning how to skate.

Yuuri’s voice gets a little faint. Probably holding the phone away from himself. He listens as Yuuri tells Viktor that he’ll be back in a moment, and then the background noise slowly disappears altogether. Yuri bites the inside of his cheek, torn between telling Yuuri to go back to practice but also not wanting to hang up just yet. Yuri has to wonder what he's even trying to do here.

_“Yurio? Is everything all right?”_

The building’s AC is on full-blast even though winter’s still going strong. Yuri’s ankles are freezing. He thinks of just how many pictures of himself in his school uniform are floating around on the internet right now, alongside those fan-taken photos of him wearing those stupid, _stupid_ cat ears. Fifteen and no privacy. Yuri tells himself to suck it up because he did this to himself but the thing is, at seven years old and just starting to fall in love with the ice, he had no idea what the hell he was getting into.

“Um,” he starts and immediately stops, grimacing at the way his voice actually _wavers_. The lump in his throat won’t go away no matter how many times he swallows, and Yuri undoes his ugly yellow tie. He chucks the thing at the stall’s Sharpie-vandalized door. It hits the plastic silently and then flutters gently to the ground.

Yuuri’s voice is soft. _“Yuri?”_

He grits his teeth and digs his fingers into the strap of his messenger bag. “Look, would you—would you mind picking me up?” Yuri's blinking rapidly, and he distantly hears himself say, “This really, _really_ sucks.”

Yuri remembers just a little too late that the person he’s talking to has a B.S. in neuroscience and a minor in chem. Yuuri fucking Katsuki, who probably treated his calculus book like a Bible and thought that his high school principal was a higher authority than the prime minister of Japan.

Come help him ditch school? Yeah, Yuri’s not holding his breath, but maybe—maybe he’s praying just a little bit. He doesn’t really expect Yuuri to answer, and he tells himself that it’s fine even though his own skin doesn't feel like it fight right. Yuri’s thumb is just hovering over the ‘ _End Call_ ’ button when—

_“Okay, what school do you go to?”_

The fuck? Yuri blinks a few times and wonders if he heard that correctly.

_“Yurio?”_

“Yeah”—he clears his throat—“I’m here.”

_“What’s your school called?”_

He draws in a deep breath. SOS received. Yuri tells him the name of his school and even recites the address for good measure. Once Yakov learns that he played hooky, there’ll most likely be hell to pay. Mila’s going to want to know what’s up. If his grandpa hears about this, he’ll worry.

When Yuuri pulls up fifteen minutes later in Viktor’s Mazda, he smiles at Yuri like everything’s going to be all right. Yuuri doesn't push him, just rattles off little tidbits of neuroscience like a human fun fact machine and doesn't question it when Yuri yanks off his school uniform right there in the passenger seat and puts on his practice clothes instead.

When they drive past the Sports Palace, Yuri gives him a sidelong glance. “Don’t you have a routine to practice or something?” he asks, which okay—a little low considering he was the one who called Yuuri out here in the first place, but still.

Yuuri shrugs, fingers tapping against the steering wheel. The gold of his ring glints off of the sunlight. “I’m in the mood for a fieldtrip," is all he says, and if they spend the rest of the next few hours hopping from museum to museum and cheating on their respective diets, well, that’s a secret just for the two of them.

 

 

 

They do return to the Sports Palace eventually though, when it’s six in the afternoon and the sun’s gone down, but neither of feel like going home even after walking around all day.

Buy a house for its nice view and never look out the window. Trade out your bike for a car and still find a way to be late. Paint your room and wish you picked a different color.

Yuri Plisetsky is six years old when he decides he wants to be a figure skater.

At seven, he thinks it might be love.

At fifteen, he’s starting to wonder if his seven year-old self even knew what love was. Yuri’s still just a teenager when he has his first mid-life crisis.

“What would you do if you woke up one day and decided that all the awards weren’t enough, and you got tired of skating?”

Across the skating rink, Yuuri’s only twenty-four, but when Yuri voices his question, he thinks that maybe those eight years have the answers he needs. Yuuri draws in one slow, long breath and lets it out in a rush, cheeks puffing up like a chipmunks. Twenty-four and looking like seventeen, a sitting jackpot for any beauty franchises big on anti-aging products. “I think that’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me, Yurio.”

Yuri and Yuuri are alone, and they skate aimlessly on one side of the rink. He wants to try a quad flip, but he knows Yuuri would panic if he fell.

Yuri scowls at him. “Because I’m asking honestly?”

“Because you’re making me think of something I don’t really want to think about.” Yuuri bites his lip, eyebrows furrowed. He’s not skating anymore, in fact, he’s standing as if he’s forgotten he was even on the ice—arms crossed, chin propped up on top of his right fist, and he almost starts pacing on the spot. Eventually, he just runs a hand through his hair and shrugs. “I don’t know, Yurio. I guess…”

Yuuri’s career? Long past its physical peak.

Yuuri’s degree? Never cashed in on.

Yuuri Katsuki? Running of fumes and trying to make it work. Yuri can respect it. Yuri expects that that’ll be him in a few odd years anyways, depending on just how hard puberty and growth spurts hit him. He could be one of the lucky ones whose body won't change much, but he gave up on luck the day both his parents found themselves out of jobs and with three kids, so.

Yuuri goes back to thinking, and Yuri starts to feel a little guilty about even voicing the question. Georgi and Mila? Still trying to find themselves. Viktor? Twenty-eight and only just discovering love and life, courtesy of one Yuuri Katsuki. Yakov? In his sixties and trying to figure out where he stands with Lilia. Twenty-four sounds like a lot of years in theory, but perhaps not enough to get yourself together.

“Is it really that bad?” Yuri asks, even though he thinks he already knows the answer.

“It’s _sad_ , Yurio. It—” Yuuri’s eyes turn glassy for a moment, but then he shakes his head. “It’s like being an artist and buying a bunch of really nice, really expensive paint and equipment and spending all your free time working on creating a masterpiece, but then losing inspiration three-quarters of the way through.” His sighs and meets Yuri’s eyes, a stern, downward turn to his lips. “It’s sad, but at the same time there’s more to life than just painting. Skating,” he auto-corrects after a moment.

Yuri blinks at him. And then he looks away because sometimes—sometimes Yuuri’s eyes are like Lilia’s. Sharp. Perceptive. And saying more than his mouth ever will.

Yuri skates with his back to Yuuri and keeps his next question to himself.

 

 

 

_Grab him by the ribbon of his medal and pull him down. “You’re not retiring, are you?”_

_A smile. “Of course not.”_

_Some people spend the entire season trying to lure Viktor back onto the ice._

_"Good.” He swallows. “Don’t ever.”_

_Yuri Plisetsky isn't one of those people; not everyone looks up to Viktor._

_Still, when it's his turn to perform, he thinks,_ Stay close to me, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> There isn’t a whole lot that Yuri’s certain of, but he knows five things. One, his grandpa's katsudon pirozhki are the best things in the world. Two, Yakov and Lilia want what’s best for him. Three, he doesn’t hate the rest of the Russian team nearly as much as he acts like he does. Four, his cat is beautiful. Five—Yuuri Katsuki is like an answer to a prayer that he never dared say aloud.
> 
>  
> 
> **Note: A product of boredom and kind of 'meh' overall, but I wanted to post one more thing before I have to head back to college. Taking nineteen credits again this semester so this is going to be it for a while lol. See you next level!**


End file.
